How have you pivoted in this pandemic?

Dear readers,

By now, I hope you have accepted Covid-19 and the stress that it brings along as the new normal.

It’s counterproductive to think otherwise and dwell on old times, user behavior, and habits. The world has changed (and so should we), and it will keep changing even after this pandemic ends.

Even as leaders preach the need to pivot and adapt, it’s hard to rewire ingrained practices and processes. We are creatures of habit, and habit helps us to go through life effortlessly. Without it, our day-to-day routine will be peppered with mental friction and frustration.

We face the same at Tech in Asia. Prior to the lockdown, our physical offices in Singapore and Jakarta were filled with positive vibes and peals of laughter. But now that we’re all working in isolation, it’s harder to feel that camaraderie.

It doesn’t deter us, though, from doing what we can to keep it alive.

We do daily random quizzes (e.g. What’s your guilty pleasure? 😉 The answers were… interesting) and occasionally host virtual drinks or karaoke sessions. To ensure we don’t forget our colleagues’ faces, we encourage everyone to turn on the video function during online team meetings.

On the business side of things, we’ve been discussing and debating about what to change and prioritize for the new world. Of course, we looked around for references and traded notes with fellow product makers and asked our users.

On making changes

This has resulted in a few changes, including:

• Virtual events – We’ve organized at least five virtual live sessions in the last 30 days, which got very healthy engagements. You’ll see more exciting developments on this front.
• TIA Lite – We launched a more affordable subscription that costs just $4.92 a month or $0.17 a day – perfect for today’s economy.
• User preference-related features – We’re looking to build a reader and an editorial dashboard, made possible thanks to the support of Google News Initiative.
• Visual stories – We’ve been telling stories through visual and interactive charts and graphs. This one is popular: “Why Indonesia’s economy will experience a boom in this decade” 🇮🇩
• TIA original videos – We’re experimenting with original video stories and this is our first one: Crossing Borders – Tapping into Greater Southeast Asia.

Virtual product conference

Another pivot is our virtual Product Development Conference, which will be fully online and will happen on July 1 to 2 (Indonesia) and July 8 to 9 (regional). We picked the theme “Pivoting products in a pandemic” so we could extend the discussion to include even more product makers and business owners. Here are some of the interesting talks we’ve lined up for you:

• Executing Product in the Middle of Uncertainty by Alfonsius P. Timboel
  Alfonsius is Halodoc’s chief product officer, and he’ll be sharing how the health tech startup reacted when Covid-19 hit.
• Building a Hardware Startup 101 by Eric Migicovsky
  A partner at Y Combinator and founder of defunct smartwatch startup Pebble, Eric will discuss how startups can manage their supply chain and distribution in the post-Covid world.
• How Covid-19 Has Accelerated the Fintech Industry by Amar Abrol
  Amar, who serves as chief commercial officer at MatchMove, will talk about how Covid-19 has changed user needs and how to develop a product that anticipates these changes.

We have many more interesting sessions in store for u. Please join us if you find the sessions useful.

On doing better

We always strive to improve and do better. Unfortunately, we may not always meet the standards we aspire to reach. And when we make mistakes, it is only right to apologize.